Cambridge, UK-based Advanced RISC Machines Ltd has signed an agreement with Quickturn Design Systems Inc that it says will enable customers to develop products based on the company’s Central Processing Unit cores and multimedia peripherals using Quickturn’s emulation systems. The deal will see ARM provide the San Jose, California based firm with verifiable intellectual property in the form of specifications for creating an emulation ‘model’ of its hardware. The model can then be put on a card in the form of hardware and software and plugged into Quickturn’s verification boxes for testing and debugging, enabling the user to develop systems based on the ARM hardware more quickly, without having to wait for chips to be fabricated. ARM says it will provide Quickturn with models of its CPUs and multimedia peripherals like Liquid Crystal Display controllers. The deal gives Quickturn rights to distribute a model of the ARM hardware for use in design verification. However, information on the actual ARM chip specification will be protected via encryption to protect the Intellectual Property rights so users will not be able to reverse engineer the CPU. ARM specializes in chips for multimedia and portable applications; customers include the likes of Texas Instrument Inc, NEC Corp, Alcatel SA and Hyundai Electronics Industries Co Ltd.
